All posts tagged Harvard

As a filmmaker, Andrew Rossi finds himself drawn to fields that are in need of disruption. His previous film “Page One: Inside the New York Times” analyzed the struggles of the newspaper industry, and his latest, “Ivory Tower,” tackles the crisis in higher education in America.

Rossi says he was drawn to the subject of higher education because of a confluence of events. Having attended Yale University and Harvard Law School, he had always thought of college as a very rewarding experience that provided a nurturing environment akin to being at home or in church. But with the rise of venture capitalists like Peter Thiel offering students a two-year, $100,000 scholarship to start a business in lieu of going to college, student loan debt passing $1 trillion, and online education through massive open online courses (MOOCs) expanding, the conversation concerning higher education had soured and he was curious to illustrate why.

Speakeasy talked with Rossi last week at the Sundance Film Festival, where “Ivory Tower” made its debut. Read More »

Harvard College reported last week that the most frequently awarded grade at the school is an A, setting off a flurry of criticism about grade inflation blah blah blah. We actually have no problem with Harvard’s grading policy because 1) Harvard students are really smart and hard-working and polite and deserve high grades 2) Harvard tuition is really, really expensive and 3) Um, we went there, which pretty much makes what we said in 1) and 2) self-serving but you have to give us an A for effort (anything less would be a shock to our system). Anyways, here’s our latest “SFW” cartoon. Leave your thoughts in the comments. Follow @cjfarley on Twitter Read More »

Media mogul Sumner Redstone graduated from Harvard College in 1944 with concentrations in classics and government. In an interview on Tuesday, the chairman of Viacom, CBS Corporation and National Amusements spoke about the value of humanities, and how his education helped his career, whether breaking code in World War II or making international deals in the boardroom.

…on the purpose of education

“Learning how to learn is very important. I think training in humanities is essential to good learning. Understanding culture and history is always an advantage. Science and math are important, but humanities is in a broader sense the story of humanity. It is the study of civilization and its history and culture.” Read More »

When I was graduating from Harvard University at a time that now seems like eons ago, I remember having a conversation with a classmate about the uphill battle I faced in convincing my parents — and, for that matter potential employers — that I wanted to pursue journalism as a career. The perception, I complained, is that if you’re Asian, you’ve been drilled your entire life for a future in a white coat: Medicine, science or engineering. It’s unimaginable that you might be interested in a risky “creative” profession, manipulating words or images rather than test results or code.

He waited quietly through my rant, and then, quirking an eyebrow, said this: “So you’re basically saying that Asians have it tough because people think you’re too smart to make a dumb move like becoming a journalist? Wish I had that problem.”

We both laughed and moved on to other subjects, but in my gut, I felt a burning need to explain to him further why the so-called “positive” stereotypes Asians encounter are a burden — not as immediately corrosive as the ones he faced growing up African American, but nevertheless insidious and harmful.

Don Lattin was formerly the religion writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s the author of a new book about the pioneers of the psychedelic movement,“The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America” (Harper). Lattin wrote an essay for Speakeasy about his own experience with altered states of conscious.

My long and somewhat strange trip began in high school with Aldous Huxley. It was the late 1960s. I was probably fifteen or sixteen years old when I read “Island,” Huxley’s final novel, the one about a cynical reporter who gets shipwrecked on a mysterious Pacific island where the natives live in cosmic harmony with all and everything.

As a novel, “Island” does not fare well with the passage of time, but it led me to “The Doors of Perception,” a book Huxley published in 1954. It describes Huxley’s first experience with psychedelics, a word the writer would later coin with an assist from Dr. Humphrey Osmond, the British researcher who guided Huxley on a mescaline trip in the spring of 1953.

I was in utero in New Jersey when Huxley had his baptismal trip in his home in the Hollywood hills. He later wrote of how he was amazed at the “is-ness” of his gray flannel trousers, how they showed him all he needed to know about “the miraculous fact of sheer existence.” Read More »

Company Demands Millions for Lennon Tape: A Massachusetts-based video company that sold rare footage of John Lennon to Yoko Ono in 2002 for $300,000 now wants a judge to force the broker involved in the deal to pay its alleged actual value: $6.3 million. Although the judge called that figure “speculative,” the footage — in which Lennon smokes marijuana and jokes about getting Richard Nixon to take acid — sounds like the sort of thing a lot of people would want to see. YouTube, anyone? [AP]

Reality Shows Make History: The History Channel has picked up several new reality shows, continuing the network’s attempt at broadening its demographic. The programs range from “Extreme Trucking” to “Pickers,” which follows antique collectors around the country. [THR]

Facebook Movie Gets Elite Harvard Access: “The Social Network,” David Fincher’s so-called “Facebook movie,” plans to start shooting next month on the Harvard campus — apparently a difficult feat for most productions. But given the wide visibility of the Aaron Sorkin-scripted project, which stars Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Harvard appears to have embraced the opportunity. [CNET]

Spidey Who?: The alleged burglar who stole Kirsten Dunst’s purse says he didn’t know who the actress was — “I’m not much of a Spiderman fan” — and didn’t know a movie was shooting. [NY Post]Read More »

Two weeks ago, actress and singer Patti LuPone grabbed a cell phone out of the hand of an audience member who was texting during a performance of her current play, "Shows for Days." The bold move led to an outpouring of support from fans fed up with glowing screens. Ms. LuPone gives us her five rules of theater etiquette.